How to Make Cookies at Home!

Baking your own cookies at home may not be as difficult as you originally thought it would be. As we have been munching down on soft, crispy, sweet, nutty or buttery cookies and confectionaries bought at various stores or shopping outlets, we used to think how nice it would be if only we could make some too of our own. Well of course, there are those who enjoyed only eating and savoring each crumbly crunch. After all, you can try to make some cookies at home if you have the basic things ready. Things like an oven or some of you might ask, ‘what if no oven?’, microwave? Well, maybe you can if your microwave supports it. Give it a try and you will know the answer. The problem with trying out things is sometimes due to a lack of determination which stops us from getting on with the idea. It is a little like ‘No oven, so don’t bother with the Microwave?’.. Well, never try, never know? So, how to make cookies at home? Start with the most basic recipes before you get on with advanced recipes to avoid giving up too early should you fail your first attempt. This is one of the easiest recipes around for baking home made butter cookies. Nothing much only butter, sugar and flour mostly. So if you do have an oven at home, all the easier.

Recipe for Butter Cookies:
210gm Unsalted Butter, 100gm castor sugar, 280gm flour, 40gm rice flour & a drop of lemon emulco(*)

What you need to do is to make sure you leave aside the butter and sugar at room temperature allowing it to melt and soften before you start the creaming process.Hence if you reside in a cold country, you will have to figure a way out by placing the butter and sugar at a warmer place. Cover them so ants or other pests would not go near them. Preferably, use a large baking bowl as it would be easier to do the mixing later with the sifted flour. The very trick to baking smooth textured cookies that are light enough yet densely mouth watering is by airing the flour and sifting through sufficiently as many times as possible. Another tip is to use better grade flour which gives out an instant redolence in the air. Then some of you might have concerns about substituting ingredients; can you use brown sugar instead of castor? Answer: Yes, but the outcome texture of the cookies would be different. If you weigh 100gm castor, be sure to weigh a little less for brown sugar as it has a lower melting point making your cookies softer eventually and your dough more difficult to form.

The simplest way to determine whether or not you are going to bake cookies instead of bread or cakes is by identifying with the dough. If you get a dough which is not too sticky and allows you to shape them with a mould, you would have your cookies. Otherwise, there may be something wrong with your ingredients. So what is creaming? After the butter has softened along with the sugar crystals, use a mixer to cream until smooth. Then fold in little by little the sifted and combined flours to form a soft dough. Make sure that you mature enough the dough before you start using a roller to flatten it.

Use a mould to cut shapes along your flattened dough and place onto a greased pan or tray. When you do place each shaped dough onto the tray, leave enough space between each dough to avoid them sticking together after they are baked. Be a little creative by sprinkling some sugar on top or placing each cut out dough with nuts. Preheat the oven and commence baking at 170 degrees for 20-30 minutes. Usually our ovens come with a tray pre-slotted in; to avoid underbaking, be sure that you have the blocking tray removed before placing your cookie pan in the oven and apply baking using the top and bottom heating filaments. When your cookies are golden and brown, leave them to cool on its rack before storing them in a cookie jar. Enjoy.